The Bass Museum is the most prestigious art museum in Miami Beach.
It was founded in 1964, thanks to the donation of the private collection of John and Johanna Bass, Jewish immigrants from Vienna who resided here in Miami Beach.
This striking building was erected on a plot of land that once belonged to John Collins, one of the founders of the city, after whom Collins Avenue was named. You may be interested to know that it was a grandson of John Collins, Russell Pancoast, who designed the building that houses the museum in the early 1930s. Of the original Art Deco style, there are Gustav Bohland’s splendid bas-reliefs above the entrances to the museum. Take a moment to look at the one in the center, depicting a stylized pelican in the middle of a mangrove forest.
The Bass reopened to the public on October 29, 2017, after a two-year closure for renovations.
Inside the museum are the works donated by the patrons of the arts John and Johanna Bass, whom I mentioned earlier. The collection is enormous, comprising over three thousand works ranging from ancient times up to the 19th century and includes paintings, sculptures, books, photographs, religious objects and much more. A visit to this museum is guaranteed not to disappoint, since the variety of the exhibits is such that there is something for everyone to enjoy.
The Bass Museum is the only one in Florida to boast a real Egyptian mummy in its sarcophagus, as well as some splendid Flemish tapestries dating to the 16th century, and a collection of paintings by renowned artists such as Pieter Paul Rubens, Albrecht Dürer and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
Let me leave you with an interesting fact: the stone used for the building is known as keystone: a kind of coral rock that comes right out of the ocean that laps the South Florida coast. If you look closely at the incrustations on the wall, you can even spot the fossil remains of sea creatures.
Language: English